Within an enterprise (such as a company, educational organization, government agency, and so forth), it is desirable that certain applications are consistently available and that they provide adequate performance. Examples of applications include web-based applications, storage applications, software applications, and so forth.
Monitoring and analysis of performance of applications can be time-consuming and labor-intensive for support personnel. For large projects, having to ensure that applications are available and performing adequately can sometimes involve great expense to the enterprise.